this week a team of engineers at san francisco's biggest brokerage tried to invent the financial future. cnbc's laura coladny tells us about the most important startups to watch and david digoranski lands $295 million in new funding to protect your secrets. our reporters harry mccracken and john schwartz from barons this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. i am going to be straight with

you. put everything on the table. i am 51. i drive a ford fusion plug-in hybrid. i'm looking to buy a new refrigerator. i take medication for mild arthritis and i bank at chase bank. now if you are google or facebook or run ads on the internet, you already knew that about me based on my internet habits. the google and facebook know so much about our personal lives it's starting to really bother a lot of americans. you recall facebook ceo mark zuckerberg was hauled before congress and congress asked him what they should do about it. clearly congress is not ready to help protect our privacy. and while net neutrality is not the same as net privacy, very few of us trust the fcc to do what's best for the consumer. so a growing number of americans are doing what people in police states do, they're hiding who they are on the internet using something called a vpn. anchor free has seen a huge uptick in interest from

consumers and capital. david gioranski just landed $295 million in capital. what does it say about the state of affairs that people who live under dictators were one of your big customer bases and now americans are one of your big customer bases? >> scott, we're seeing a lot of people in the united states extremely concerned about their security and privacy online and as security and privacy challenges grow exponentially, we're seeing the crack attack recently which proved that all wi-fi, both home and office and public wi-fi was unsafe. we're seeing things like cambridge analytica. we're seeing things like facebook and google exploiting our data for different reasons. americans are growing concerned about privacy. >> and to be specific for the viewer, if you don't protect me from hacks, you protect me from

people on the internet or ads on the internet understanding who i am, is that fair? if i tell facebook i am this old and i do this, you're not protecting me from that because that's information i've volunteered. it's more the stuff that they pick out of the data, right? >> sort of. what we do is we secure all of your traffic when you're connected to networks or websites that may not be safe. we also block phishing and malware sites. if you get something from your bank it's a phishing site, we'll tag that and notify you. we are essentially blocking your i.p. address which is the unique number your internet service providers gives to you. they can't sell that data and so on. another thing is the biggest

challen challenge, if you're volunteering information, that's fair game. facebook is often buying data that you never volunteered from other places like web md, google and attributing that to your profile which you've never given them the right to do. that's something that's pretty dangerous and that has a lot of people concerned. you go to do a search for health-related stuff and you get an ad for that. >> pretty scary. the $295 million you raised through venture capital, that was in september. how much of that total had to do with cambridge analytica, equifax, net neutrality, the steady drum beat of privacy breaches which continue through google plus? >> yeah, i think the over arching reason for raising the capital was that, one, there really isn't a real mainstream solution for addressing these growing security and privacy -- >> have you seen the reference to becoming more mainstream through your service, there's a reason for that. >> nine out of ten americans

have never even heard of vpn much less what to do with it and how to install it? >> yet if you look in the app store, it's among the top most 100 downloaded apps. if you look at the apps it's facebook, spotify, twitter. most of them are making money from exemployediploiting your d we're making money from protecting it. the first three companies online are yahoo, google and facebook. they're all in the business for exploiting your data. we're in the business of protecting your data. >> consumers always say they care about privacy but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to put much work into protecting their privacy. how do you overcome that challenge? >> well, the trick here is to make sure that privacy is simple, right? so historically and what's very hard to protect your privacy, you know, the people want to collect our data make it very easy. click a like button and we'll collect your data. the people that want to protect

our privacy in the past made it difficult. read this privacy policy, download this big file, whatever else. right now we've made it extremely simple to protect user privacy, it's one button, make me private. you click it on, you click it off. one thing that we've seen is people don't care about their privacy all the time. there's a lot of times people don't care but the times when people do care often is things around health, wealth and family. we've done some anonymous surveys. do you care about privacy and if so, when? what we've learned is 70% of the time people don't care. they're happy to share their pictures on facebook or whatnot. the 30% of time when it comes to health, wealth, family, they care a lot. that's where we're like, look, here's a very simple app. you click one button, make me private and they're private. >> when i normally serve the computer, the i.p. address is saying this is coming from zip code 95131, we've seen this guy

before. i know who he is based on his digital fingerprint and gather more. this is sort of a pipeline straight to the website in which the website and everyone along the way is -- i haven't the faintest idea who this guy is. is that a fair statement? >> basically. >> how is that different than when i go on google chrome and go into anonymous mode? is that only protecting my web browsing history and nothing else? >> it's different in a different way. it protects you from cookies in the browser. >> okay. >> but it doesn't protect your i.p. address. >> it still says this guy is coming from -- >> this is how are, this is where you're located, we're just not tracking exactly like what you're doing in the browser. >> sure. >> we still know who you are. every website knows who you are they don't know exactly what your interests are. when you're using hot spot shield we protect your i.p. address and furthermore we're working on launching new technology to block trackers so

anybody who is trying to track you online will be blocked. >> but most companies on the internet are -- particularly facebook and google are relying on advertising. does what you're doing break the internet? >> i don't think so and here's why. it comes back to the example the survey we did where people said 70% of the time they don't care about privacy, 30% they care a lot. what we're thinking is if today 650 million people have installed this across the world. imagine if that grows to 3, 4 billion people in the future, it doesn't disrupt the internet. it doesn't disrupt the businesses of the companies that make ad dollars. it says, look, consumers should have a choice and if 70% of the time consumers don't care about privacy and security, that's totally fine. the internet stays the way it is today. google and facebook make their money. for the 30% they deserve the ability to raise their hand and

say, look, i'm not giving you data. >> so your growth in the u.s., has that taken off exponentially? >> it has. >> there's a huge debate in tech about data, whether is it the apple approach, we care about your privacy and then you have the facebook approach, you have this big divide. i'm wondering as more americans become aware of it you see a growth in the u.s., which is probably one of your smaller markets, i assume? >> we definitely do. three years ago the u.s. was 20% of our user base. today we get 300,000 new installs per day of our applications, half of that is in the united states. massive, massive interest in u.s. consumers. >> david, i'm up against the clock. give me a 30 second answer. what do you do with $295 million? >> we're looking to expand our security and privacy portfolio beyond vpn to a number of different products and we're looking for acquisitions of

things that could help sort of bring more value around security and privacy to our users. >> david, looking to buy your company. the ceo of banker free. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. up next is robo investing better than relying on a broker? we'll put an investor from charles schwab in a very interesting position trying to answer that question when "pr s "press: here" continues.

welcome back to "press: here." robo investing is a new way to buy stocks. combine that with easy to use financial apps and a whole new generation of investors are putting money into the market, buying stocks as easily as they order up an uber or a burger from door dash. head of robo advisory from charles schwab. he's senior vice president from digital advising. he has put together a crack team of engineers who are teaching computer how to invest. schwab is not the only one in the game. they're competing for the same space. i'm going to put tobin in an awkward spot. either his computers are better than a schwab brokers and i don't need a broker or his computers are better. good morning to you. which one is it? >> good morning.

robo advice is technology enabled investment advice. it actually expands advice to a much wider audience than we had before. get a great portfolio, we manage it for them, answer a few questions online. the algorithm looks at hundreds of thousands of accounts a day. >> is it going to be wealthier people that use brokers and entry level people that use robo advisors? >> we see this appealing to a wide audience. half are over the age of 50. >> you see my problem here? >> yes. >> if robo advising is as good as brokers, why do you need brokers? >> robo advising helps automate things brokers have done. our portfolios are still designed by investing experts with decades of experience. our advisors still help people think about how do i save for the long run? how do i save for college? when do i retire. >> how dependable is a robo

advisor in a bearish market when it's something unpredictable? does it adapt well? >> our portfolios are designed to keep someone invested for the long run so we have portfolios that are built to help soften some of the downturns. there's trading during down markets to get people back on their target allocations. >> back in the '70s schwab was a disruptive startup. how do you compete with the small startups that are also competing in this category? >> we love the innovation that's happening in our industry. it's making investing better for investors. that's what schwab was aiming to do back in the '70s and has done ever since. we're pleased with what we're doing. we're by far the largest in the space. we offer great value. we think our technology stands up and it's backed by a company with, you know, a long history. >> so you gather this team together by crack engineers,

right? you think they're the best in the world. if they're great engineers, how do they know how to program an algorithm to invest or are they great investors and in which case how do they know how to program a computer? >> when we built our team, we have a team of people who have been designing portfolios and thinking about the best practices for how you manage a portfolio over time. then you hire great engineers and product folks to bring that to life. it's the two of them together that makes it work. you have a team together that brings it to market. you can't have a great engineer, a great finance person, you have to have both. >> how much opportunity is there in the years to comfort ai to get smarter and result in more effective investing? >> i think there's real opportunity for ai, for machine learning to help understand what will help you stay invested and get the right portfolios for you. understand your preferences, how you react when markets get rocky and what your goals are.

provide more advice. it's helping the individual. >> robo advisors are ultimately designed for long-term investments. what type of investments do they make in a typical scenario? what type of stocks or mutual funds? >> for us our portfolios are globally diversified portfolios that are more aggressive or conservative depending on your own goals, time line. we buy low cost etf, exchange traded funds to invest in. that gives broad representation to the market. that's typically how most robo advisors work. >> i can see how that could be automated. you're a financial advisor as well. if i sit down with you i say, these are my goals, we're going to put you in a medium risk, 60% this, 40% that, that is something that can be fairly easily automated based on the data on the returns? >> yes. we've seen a big shift to

passive investing and model portfolios like a 60/40. >> using that as an example. >> that's a great one. there's a lot to be automated in that. >> that's because i'm a smart guy. >> there's a lot that can be automated in that. around that is why are you investing? what's your goal. >> easily automated. >> and some of that is where a person can come in and help, too. this can be very automated for a lot of investors. it opens the market to smaller investors. you can start with us as low as $5,000. you could never have gotten investment advice before at that level. it opens the market. >> are consumers more open minded to this approach to investing? we had a guest on a week or so ago about ai and how people are deferring decisions to computers. >> we're seeing great growth in this space. the market for robo advice has been growing very strongly. we've been seeing triple digit growth year over year. i think it's consumers becoming

very difficult. what we have found is they want to kick the tires a little bit. sometimes they want to know about the people behind it who's monitoring the software that's managing my money. but technology is making investing better like it makes every other part of our lives together. people are coming to trust it and i think will continue to do so. >> how much making this work is about the user experience and doing an app that is friendly and approachable? >> i think that is -- that's critical to this, to, one, making people comfortable, to getting them to engage, get the type of advice they need. we spend a significant amount of time user researching, testing, having u.s. designers working on continually iterating how we improve the experience so that becomes valuable to the investor and gets some help and helps them achieve their goals. >> it helps create some fun out of this. fidelity, you can go on your fidelity app. you can see your money, savings, ira. you say, good for me in a way

you wouldn't with the envelope. >> kind of like fantasy sports. >> kind of. yeah. i've got a quick second more. that is in this suddenly weird week we just had there is that temptation where you have sell, sell, sell. it's much faster and easier to get out of a market. i'm expecting you're going to advise don't hit the sell button right away. >> we don't think people should hit the sell button right away. how our clients are behaving, the vast majority are staying the course. we're hopefully giving them the right advice to stay invested for the long run. very few people need their money today. we're saving for something off in the future. >> thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you. well, cnbc is out with its list of 100 startups you need to know about. we'll try to get to at least a few of them when "press: here" continues.

you know his legacy on the field but who was he off the field? >> ultimate teammate. "press: here" is available as a podcast on itunes. welcome back. cnbc comes up with a list of hot startups. last year the list was 25 hot startups long. this year it's 100 startups long. i suspect that's a sign of the times. there are so many worthwhile startups to talk about. one is fetro robotics.

that joins 99 other companies on the cnbc list. here to tell us more about who made the list and why is cnbc's laura colodny. let me start with the first 25 to 100, is that the right assessment? are there so many we can't get 25 of them? >> you can't do proper startup analysis with the limit of 125 small businesses and startups are affordable now. it's easier to do more with the developer tools and a little bit of financial support whether that's bank loan, credit cards, straight up venture capital and grants. >> you expanded it. you quadrupled the number. is that a reflection of the tech ipo market which is the best since 2014. it could be even better next year. there are more companies going public. >> more money? >> more money going to the market despite what the market's doing over the last week, if there's more -- it's more receptive to tech. >> the ipo window has opened up.

this could be a bell weather for another generation. these are fairly early stage companies. they're all five years or younger. >> okay. >> they were within the category of companies that had -- if they had raised money, a handful were boot strapped. they raised 50,000 or less. >> they're younger than five years in a lot of cases, a lot of companies are going public are a decade old? >> yeah. >> totally using the word capital cannon sometime. >> i saw lots of silicon valley companies from san francisco, new york, austin. are there any other places around the country that are hot spots? >> we actually kind of prorated the list. the methodology gives a little stronger weighting to an area where they don't have much capital access. i don't want to get the number wrong, but it was more than a dozen cities around the u.s. and nine different countries. >> because we'd be less aware of them and you think we should have more attention to them, is

that why it was prorated that way? >> and it's harder to start and grow a business and get that revenue. >> it's a sign they must be doing really well? >> they're overcoming regional challenges as well. >> what are some themes? look at all of these robotic companies. look at all of these robotic companies. is there an over arching theme? >> i did see a lot of robotics companies. there weren't a lot of wearables as the prior years, the disrupters and upstarts which used to be a limited number. but, you know, wearables seem to have faded for the time being. >> apple seems to have -- you see apple. >> yup. there was one smart glass company and -- but that was interesting. there was also one trip of the companies worked on by women. that was a nice sign. >> kind of a -- continuing what

scott said but in a sense can you identify key trends in the market, up and coming? so by doing -- by following these companies in a sense you're actually helping feed the news cycle in which companies you're looking at. potential acquisitions and potentially going public? >> i think so. this is the aaa talent scouting for companies that want to acquire like the guest you had earlier in cyber security. these are companies that had to -- we didn't necessarily print all the data they shared with us, but for the methodology, you know, they had to share for analysis customer growth, revenue, things like this. so it's real traction. it's not just valuation on paper and like i said, there was some weighting. so you might lose, you know, half a point if you didn't have a diverse sounding team. >> did you hear from companies you may not be aware of that want to be on the list and promoting themselves. if you need the i fishtive to

tell the world you're growing, you're here, i'm okay. >> is it something that impacts start zblups. >> ai is everywhere. it's in the health place, consumer there's an app called fi finery. it was a virtual stylist. there was an app called curology. >> amazing. >> if i'm not mistaken, a lot of these startups are trying to layer in machine learning to make more efficient work even with what they do with people. all the robotics companies are using computer vision to -- there was a really fascinating one called veil robotics using cameras and computers to make sure they don't keep operatinop.

that will usher in a new change. there were self-driving robots operating next to people in warehouses from six river systems, and one with a cart. >> we had melanie wise on from fetch robotics. i have to cut you there. cnbc.com/upstart100, is that right? thank you for sharing. i know we couldn't get to all of them. laura, thank you for sharing and "press: here" will be back in a minute.

"press: here" is available as a podcast on itunes. that's our show this week. my nanks to my guest. a reminder you can watch past interviews of press here at presshere.com. we're available as a podcast on itunes. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. and welcome to "comunidad del valle." la familia, the family of your "comunidad del valle."

male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: we begin today with the mayor of san jose. the honorable sam liccardo is our guest today to talk about housing here in san jose. welcome to the show, mayor. sam liccardo: always a pleasure, damian. damian: thank you. thank you for being here. so, you know, we all worry when we hear and read about our teachers specifically, that they love to teach here but they just can't afford to live here. how big of a concern--how often do you hear that and how big of a concern is it for you? sam: i hear it every day. we know there are thousands of families who are struggling just to be able to hang on here with high housing costs. we certainly feel it most acutely when we think about